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Assembly languages are processor-specific low-level languages. They are rarely used any more except for handling very low-level machine-specific tasks, since languages like C can generally satisfy most requirements, even low-level ones. The other main use of assembly language is to provide the "glue" to enable different languages to be used in a single program. It is however useful to know something about assembly language to get a feel for what goes on inside a processor, as well as for understanding code generation in compilers and for debugging when there is no source code available.
A86, a very good shareware 80x86 assembler | |
Arrowsoft Assembler, a free 80x86 assembler | |
Magic Assembler 1.10, another free 80x86 assembler | |
A cross-assembler for the Motorola 68000 which includes an emulator, so you can write and test 68000 assembler programs on a PC | |
x68k.zip, another cross-assembler and emulator for the Motorola 68000 | |
Several additional development tools (debuggers etc.) |
An 80x86 assembly language tutorial by Gavin Estey, the maintainer of the rec.games.programmer FAQ | |
The 8086 family assembly language FAQ | |
The A86 FAQ for the shareware A86 assembler (see above) | |
The Microsoft MASM FAQ | |
The Borland TASM FAQ | |
The Game Developer's FAQ for the newsgroup rec.games.programmer | |
The PC Games Programmer's Encyclopedia: a collection of source code and text documentation related to games programming for MS-DOS |
Several source code examples |
A list of Assembly Internet Resources at EG3 Communications | |
Tore's Programming Page has links to several tutorials | |
Strange Creations, Gavin Estey's excellent collection of programming resources (especially information about games programming) | |
Intel Secrets: What Intel doesn't want you to know. An excellent site, with lots of information about undocumented "features" of Intel processors | |
X2FTP, an excellent FTP archive in Finland with lots of material related to games programming | |
Processor manufacturers: Intel and Motorola | |
Assembly language links at Yahoo (or at Yahoo UK) | |
The newsgroup comp.lang.asm.x86 | |
The newsgroup comp.os.msdos.programmer: a good source of information on programming PCs, although it is not restricted to assembly-language programming |